Bauhaus Weimar International

Visions and Projects 1919–1925

Although the Bauhaus opened its door in 1919, it took more than three years for Gropius to fully organize the school’s faculty, since with the departure of several of the old art school’s professors, such as Max Thedy, Richard Engelmann and Walther Klemm, open positions had to be regularly filled. But Gropius’s first appointments indicated the course set toward an international avant-garde school, a school of invention.

After the manifesto of the State Bauhaus in Weimar penned by Walter Gropius was published in the spring of 1919, the school’s program attracted more than 200 students from throughout Europe and the German provinces. The portion of foreign students attending the Bauhaus in Weimar was 17.5 percent in 1922; at the Dessau Bauhaus it had reached 32 percent by the end of 1931. Equal opportunity was a top priority. There were virtually no restrictions with regard to students’ gender, nationality, skin color, religion/worldview, prior training or financial means. The one-semester basic course served as a trial semester, determining the suitability of the prospective students and enabling students from abroad to learn German within the community. A large student contingent, mainly from bourgeois Viennese Jewish families, arrived with Johannes Itten at the end of 1919. A second group consisting of young Hungarian emigrants from Pecs and Budapest—some of whom had participated in the Hungarian Soviet Republic and were now undergoing political persecution—followed in the mid-1920s, arriving via Vienna and Berlin. Among them were Marcel Breuer, Andor Weininger, Henrik Stefan and Farkas Molnár.1

Although the Bauhaus opened its door in 1919, it took more than three years for Gropius to fully organize the school’s faculty, since with the departure of several of the old art school’s professors, such as Max Thedy, Richard Engelmann and Walther Klemm, open positions had to be regularly filled. But Gropius’s first appointments indicated the course set toward an international avant-garde school, a school of invention. The German-American Lyonel Feininger followed Itten, who hailed from Südern-Linden in Switzerland, to the Bauhaus in its first year, and other foreign hires followed: Swiss native Paul Klee in 1921, the Russian Wassily Kandinsky in 1922 and the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy in 1923. This faculty was rounded off by the German artists Gerhard Marcks, Georg Muche and Oskar Schlemmer, as well as the architect Adolf Meyer, a partner in Gropius’s architecture office. These avant-garde artists served as “form masters” and directors of the Bauhaus workshops, working alongside acknowledged masters of different handicrafts in a dual system that trained students to be both proficient craftspeople and creative thinkers. The variegated artistic and pedagogical experiences of this faculty and the cosmopolitanism of the student body reinforced the Bauhaus’s pedagogical mission, which always stressed a holistic approach to its students, encouraging them to develop all their talents so that they would become individual designers.2

With his “Cathedral,” the woodcut gracing the title page of the Bauhaus manifesto, Feininger had already broadcast a signal of artistic departure in 1919. The first Bauhaus signet, on the other hand, was developed by Karl Peter Röhl, the winner of a student competition. His “Star Manikin” congenially symbolized the intellectual universe and the pedagogical aims of the early Bauhaus. At its center was a slim human figure holding aloft an Egyptian pyramid, surrounded by a host of cosmic symbols—the swastika, the sun wheel and the Buddhists’ symbol of happiness. The figure’s stylized circular head—half black, half white—symbolized the Chinese yin and yang. The stick figure itself is the Germanic rune for man and woman, while also referencing Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of Vitruvian man.3 This signet, with its many spiritual references, offered a vision of a new, peaceful and global community, signaling the overcoming of outmoded Eurocentric patterns of thinking and behavior, replaced by the project of educating creative designers imbued with a new trans-cultural sensibility, within a democratically constituted society. Oskar Schlemmer’s 1921 adaptation eliminated the symbolic trapping of Röhl’s expressive and perhaps overly exuberant utopian vision, creating the far more famous Bauhaus head in profile.

Johannes Itten dominated the pedagogical profile of the Bauhaus in its first years. While still residing in Vienna, in 1919 he printed a portfolio of ten lithographs visualizing his artistic and art-pedagogical program, and demonstrating different steps and methods of artistic abstraction. Alongside plants and an Alpine landscape are dynamic depictions of figures that appear to be inspired by Italian Futurism, complimented by non-representational, abstract compositions, cosmic visions that can also be read as symbols for different emotional states. What remains remarkable even today is the pluralistic—one could say conceptual—approach he takes in this sequence of graphics.4 With the publication of his graphic, Analysen Alter Meister” (Analyses of Old Masters), published in the magazine Utopia in 1921, Itten made public his artistic basic training in a form combining images with text. He presented his method of pictorial analysis at the Bauhaus based not only on German examples such as the Adoration by Meister Francke, but also a traditional Chinese ink brush master. The complexity of the analyses is remarkable, carried out in content-related and formal terms that use language and drawing to allude to different levels of abstraction, with the aid of mathematical methods of geometry and algebra:5 Art and science are here united in the educational process. On the other hand, what remains problematic is his allegiance to the Mazdaznan sect, a movement based on Zorastrianism that had its origins in the spiritualist revival that swept across the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.6 With the departure of Itten and the further formation of the Bauhaus as a modern design school under the leitmotif of Gropius’s “Art and Technology: A New Unity,” Mazdaznan soon lost its relevance to the Bauhaus program. Discussions of religious, philosophical and ideological issues, however, continued as a facet of Bauhaus campus life—for example, with the Bauhaus evenings—discussed at greater length below—where salon-style events were held with “the intention of bringing together the local population and the youth of the Bauhaus.”7

In 1920 Lyonel Feininger became the director of the printing workshop, following Walther Klemm. It was the only open workshop of the Bauhaus, giving both teachers and students the opportunity to print their works. His most important international project was the portfolio Bauhaus-Drucke. Neue Europäische Graphik (Bauhaus Prints: New European Graphic Art), which in five editions published from 1921 to 1924 brought together 56 works by 49 French, Italian, Russian and German artists. The list of names reads like a who’s who of the European avant-garde of the early twentieth century. Alongside such Bauhaus masters as Feininger, Itten, Kandinsky, Klee, Marcks, Muche, Schlemmer and Schreyer, the Bauhaus-Drucke published French artists such as Coubine, Léger, Marcoussis and Survage, Russians such as Archipenko, Chagall, Gontcharova, Jawlensky, and Larionov, Italians like Boccioni, Carrà, Chirico, Prampolini and Severini, and many Germans unaffiliated with the school, including Baumeister, Beckmann, Dexel, Grosz, Kirchner, Kokoschka, Macke, Marc, Pechstein, Schmidt-Rottluff and Schwitters. The Bauhaus thus latched onto the European network that Herwarth Walden had previously established in 1912 with his Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin. In this way, the Bauhaus students were not only given firsthand access to European avant-garde art, but even had the opportunity to produce these prints themselves. In addition to propagating modern contemporary art, Feininger’s project also served as a supplemental funding stream to support the Bauhaus.8

With the large Bauhaus exhibition of 1923, Weimar became the definitive meeting place of the international avant-garde. The works created at the Bauhaus were presented in the Bauhaus buildings, the model house Am Horn and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar, with a supporting program at the Deutsches Nationaltheater and the Stadttheater Jena. Integrated in the show was the world’s first international architecture exhibition of modernism after the First World War, presented in the main building of the Bauhaus and published by Gropius in 1925 as Bauhausbuch 1: Internationale Architektur (International Architecture). It featured not only the most important architectural projects undertaken by Gropius—including the Fagus Factory in Alfeld an der Leine and the model factory at the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne in 1914—but also his Baukasten im Großen (large-scale construction kit), and plans for a new Bauhaus university campus in Weimar (Bauhaus Settlement). Models of path-breaking high-rise buildings and offices by the future, third director of the Bauhaus, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, were on display, as well as Le Corbusier’s plans for a city of millions—exhibited there for the first time. Frank Lloyd Wright was featured as the pioneer of American architecture alongside several architects of the Dutch avant-garde, with representatives of the De Stijl group, including Dudok, Oud, Rietveld and Wils (who had been able to realize important buildings and ensembles even during the war). Czechoslovakia was represented by young architects from Prague, such as Chochol, Honzik, Krejcar, and Linhart, while architects from the Soviet Russian avant-garde made their appearance only in the catalog. Of course, other German architects like Döcker, Häring, Mendelsohn, Sharoun, as well as Bruno and Max Taut also participated in the show.9 The catalog was published in both English and Russian-language editions.

The Bauhaus exhibition was advertised using numerous forms of printed matter, ranging from posters and nationwide railway ads, to invitation and program cards, as well as a series of postcards with 20 motifs designed by eight teachers and twelve students (those of the latter were in no way inferior to the work of their instructors). The color lithographs were prepared in the Bauhaus printing workshop but printed in Weimar due to the large edition of two thousand. The 40,000 postcards were sent all over the world by mail—most likely the first ever mail-art action.10

A large part of the library of the Weimar State Bauhaus has survived and today is accessible in the library of the Bauhaus University Weimar.11 Its contents are another indicator of the international orientation of the Bauhaus, for it includes not only standard reference works on the history of European art and culture, but also a broad spectrum of publications dedicated to non-European cultures, ranging from archaeological research results of the early Neolithic period in Europe, to African and Asian sculpture, all the way to the art of Polynesia and the architecture of Persia, China, Japan, and Indonesia. What should be mentioned in particular are the publications of the Folkwang Verlag in Hagen and its main author Ernst Fuhrmann, who edited illustrated volumes on the Incas, the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico, Indigenous North American tribes and sacred cults in Africa as the prehistory of the hieroglyphs. But in the library’s catalogue one could also find the most recent literature on the international avant-garde, the Dutch magazine Wendingen, Taut’s Frühlicht and Alpine Architektur, Kahnweiler’s Der Weg zum Kubismus (The Rise of Cubism), publications of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers Council for Art) in Berlin, and international press reports in favor of preserving the Bauhaus from 1924.

From 1924 onward, the most important media project of the Bauhaus was the series of Bauhausbücher (Bauhaus Books) conceived and edited by Gropius and Moholy-Nagy (who designed and supervised the typography).12 In the prospectus announcing the project they wrote: “Based on the insight that all areas of design in life are interconnected, the Bauhaus publishing house issues a series of books that deal with today’s problems of life. (…) The Bauhaus Books will engage with artistic, scientific and technical issues under the aspect of their interrelations. (…) To master such a great task, the Bauhaus publishing house has asked the most knowledgeable experts from different countries to collaborate.”13 Until 1929, 14 Bauhausbücher were published, with the collaboration of colleagues from abroad on typography and book design.14 Several books in the series authored by Bauhaus teachers continue to rank among standard modernist reference works, including Klee’s Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical Sketchbook, Bauhausbuch 2), Oskar Schlemmer’s Die Bühne am Bauhaus (The Theater of the Bauhaus, Bauhausbuch 4), Moholy-Nagy’s Malerei, Photographie, Film (Painting Photography Film, Bauhausbuch 8) and Von Material zu Architektur (The New Vision: From Material to Architecture, Bauhausbuch 14), as well as Kandinsky’s Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (Point and Line to Plane, Bauhausbuch 9). Starting in 1926, the Bauhaus Books were supplemented with the more up-to-date medium of the Bauhaus journals that pursued the same goals.

International influences can also be found in the artworks, design objects and architectural project that came out of the Bauhaus. Here are just a few examples. The home Gropius built for the Berlin building contractor Adolf Sommerfeld in 1920 was inspired by a photo of the Shōsō-in treasure house in Nara, Japan. By contrast, his director’s office at the Bauhaus in Weimar, built in 1923, was designed entirely in accordance with the principles of the Dutch De Stijl movement.15 Marcel Breuer, in collaboration with Gunta Stölzl, created in 1921 the so-called African chair, recalling the throne of an African tribal chieftain: at the Haus Am Horn two years later he presented a prototype of his Constructivist lattice chair, and in 1926 his vision of an air column for sitting came to fruition with his famous tubular steel chair, “Wassily.”16 The white square in Feininger’s depiction of the village church of Gelmeroda appears to correspond with Malevich’s “Black Square,” while Muche’s residential high-rise with terrace gardens bears a close resemblance to Le Corbusier’s designs for green roofing. Finally, masks and costumes designed for Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet, produced in the Bauhaus workshops, reference comparable African and Asian objects.

Finally, the Bauhaus evenings must be mentioned. These were first introduced as voluntary events hosted by students in the spring of 1919, where an array of topics were discussed, ranging from ancient Egyptian history, Giotto’s frescos, Rembrandt’s hand drawings, all the way to Rodin’s cathedral paintings and modern literature.17 Hence, a format was born that had a crucial impact on the intellectual universe of the Bauhaus. From 1924 onward, they were professionalized under the guidance of the Circle of Friends of the Bauhaus. The first ever Bauhaus public event was launched on June 12, 1919, with a concert given by the local musician, composer and jurist Ernst Latzko. Almost 50 musical events and lectures were held at the Bauhaus Weimar, and these varied widely in content and form, often containing international elements. Such was the case with Else Lasker-Schüler’s reading of her Hebräische Balladen (Hebrew Ballads), a piano recital by Eduard Steuermann featuring works by Arnold Schönberg, Maurice Ravel, Erik Satie and Claude Debussy, or Hermann Ranke’s reading of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In 1921 Inayat Khan delivered a lecture on “The Nature of Art,” Heinrich Vogeler on “Die religiöse Bewegung der Revolution” (The Religious Movement of the Revolution), Otto Rauth on the Mazdaznan teachings and, in the spring of 1922, Enrique Colás spoke on “Funktionalismus in Antoni Gaudis Werk” (Functionalism in Antoni Gaudi’s Work). J. J. P. Oud’s lecture “Neues Bauen in Holland” (New Building in Holland) on 17 August 1923 marked the start of a week of festivities dedicated to the opening of the Bauhaus exhibition, and the following day a concert featuring works by Paul Hindemith and Ferrucio Busoni took place in the presence of composers from the Deutsches Nationaltheater. The day after, a matinee was held where compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Ernst Krenek were performed in the presence of the composers.18

At the Bauhaus in Dessau, records show that around 120 events were held from 1927 until its closure in June 1932. These included lectures held by Erich Mendelsohn on “Rußland und Amerika – ein architektonischer Querschnitt” (Russia and America – An Architectural Cross-Section), Gropius on “Amerika,” and El Lissitzky on “Architektur und Werkarbeit” (Architecture and Workmanship). The Hungarian architect Paul Forgo-Fröhlich presented “Neues Bauen in Ungarn” (New Building in Hungary), Russian film pioneer Dziga Vertov spoke on “Kino-Auge. Methode und Technik des russischen Films” (Cine-Eye: The Method and Technique of Russian Film), Viennese philosopher of science Herbert Feigl spoke on “Die wissenschaftliche Weltanschauung” (The Scientific Worldview) and “Naturgesetz und Willensfreiheit” (Natural Law and Freedom of Will), while his colleagues Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath presented lectures, respectively, on “Wissenschaft und Leben” (Science and Life), “Die vierdimensionale Welt der modernen Physik” (The Four-Dimensional World of Modern Physics) and “Geschichte und Wirtschaft” (History and Economy). Czech polymath Karel Teige offered guest courses on contemporary literature, modern typography, and the sociology of the city and living, Swiss architect and design instructor Paul Artaria spoke on the financing and practical realization of modern building projects, and the Dutch photographer, typographer and industrial designer Piet Zwart discussed modern typography. Two highlights of the Bauhaus evenings devoted to music were certainly a concert by Bela Bartok and a dance performance by Gret Palucca.19

The Bauhaus in Weimar proved to be a melting pot for the most various ideas and concepts of the European avant-garde, becoming one of the most significant institutions for modernism, and a crucial point of communication in the dissemination of modernist ideas. The role of the Bauhaus as an axis radiating outward and connecting with other modernist thinkers and institutions would continue after the institution moved to Dessau.

Gropius wrote his Bauhaus manifesto shortly after the end of World War I. The German empire had collapsed, Russia had undergone a revolution and a second revolution in Germany was in the process of being suppressed. Throughout Germany people felt the necessity for a social and intellectual change. → more

For the Yamawaki couple, their studies at the Dessau Bauhaus ended with the closure of the Dessau site. Iwao’s luggage for his return home also included his collage Der Schlag gegen das Bauhaus. It was first published in the architecture magazine Kokusai kenchiku in December 1932. Iwao let the collage speak for itself, publishing it without comment. → more

The Bauhaus is renowned for its contribution to modernist architecture and design. Less known but equally significant is its pioneering role in opening up a transcultural network that created the conditions for global conversations on art and design as early as the 1920s. → more

This essay was occasioned by the Delhi exhibition of the Hangzhou chapter of bauhaus imaginista and the accompanying seminar in December 2018. The overarching brief of the seminar was to discuss the pedagogic aspects of schools in various parts of the world that are relatable to the practices of Bauhaus. Specifically, the essay attempts to capture the foundational moments of Kala Bhavana, the art school in Santiniketan that, incidentally, also steps into its centenary year in 2019. → more

The art school Kala Bhavan was founded by the poet Rabindranath Tagore in 1919 at Santiniketan, a utopian community about 100 miles north of Calcutta established in the previous century by the poet’s father, Maharshi Devendranath Tagore. Born out of the need to rehabilitate traditional Indian culture after the demoralizing impact of British rule, the school was established as an experiment in education that broke with academic tradition, and created a form of rural modernism decoupled from industrial modernization. → more

Unlike the Bauhaus, Kala Bhavana had no written manifesto or curriculum. However, a corpus of writing developed around the school, largely produced by the school’s artists and teachers. The academic Partha Mitter, whose own writing has explored the interplay between the struggle against colonialism, modernism, and the cultural avant-garde in India, has selected a group of texts on education in Santiniketan. → more

In this article Natasha Ginwala examines how certain Bauhaus ideas flowed into Tagore’s pedagogic experiment and rural reconstruction program at Sriniketan (created in 1921–22), as well as the engagement with design Dashrath Patel, the founding secretary of the National Institute of Design (NID) and its leading pedagogue, pursued in the rural sphere. → more

The question of how one resists populist nationalism is both obvious and fiendishly difficult. This sounds like a paradoxical proposition, and, indeed, it is. I am inspired by an early critique of nationalism which bears an uncanny resonance in today’s world: a critique that was made in 1916 by the Bengal poet and visionary, Rabindranath Tagore, during a lecture tour in Japan, in the midst of the First World War. → more

ln December 1922, ‘The Fourteenth Annual Exhibition of the lndian Society of Oriental Art’ was held at Samavaya Bhavan, number seventeen Park Street. Paintings by artists from the ‘Bengal school’—all of them members of the lndian Society of Oriental Arts—were exhibited. Most of these artists painted in a manner, which would have been recognisable as that school’s invention, a particularly lndian signature style, with mythology as preferred subject. Hung on the other side of the hall was a large selection of works from the Bauhaus. → more

The Otolith Group have been commissioned to produce The O Horizon for bauhaus imaginista, a new film containing studies of Kala Bhavana as well as the wider environments of Santiniketan and Sriniketan. Through rare footage of art, craft, music and dance, it explores the material production of the school and its community as well as the metaphysical inclinations that guided Tagore’s approach to institution building. → more

The works from Anna Boghiguian shown here are from an installation commissioned by the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) titled A Play to Play as part of the exhibition Tagore’s Universal Allegories in 2013. These works incorporate elements associated with Tagore, from the artist’s frequent visits to Santiniketan. → more

In this essay Linn Burchert sheds some light on the darkness obscuring Grunow’s practice by presenting the background and details of Grunow’s teaching, concluding by examining the striking parallels between her harmonization teaching and meditative and yogic practices, which had already been introduced at the Bauhaus in Johannes Itten’s preliminary course. → more

Even though the progressive artists of the interwar period ultimately failed in their plan to realize the new, egalitarian society they had envisioned, their influence was lasting. The international avant-garde produced some of the most important artists of the twentieth century. Meanwhile, some members of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst (Workers council for art) occupied important positions at the Bauhaus—above all, its founding director Walter Gropius. → more

Kawakita called the educational activities that developed around the central axis of the School of New Architecture and Design “kōsei education.” The term “compositional/structural education” is often taken nowadays to refer to a preparatory course in composition derived from the Bauhaus—plastic arts training in which plastic elements such as color, form and materials are treated abstractly. → more

The impact of the Bauhaus teaching methods reached far beyond Germany. Conversely, throughout its existence, a Japanese sensibility permeated the Bauhaus, springing from the Japonisme of individual professors, until its closure in 1933. This article analyzes the reciprocal impact of German and Japanese design education in the interbellum period in order to shed new light on the tightly knit network of associations then connecting Japan and Europe. → more

Having experimented with Mazdaznan’s teachings on nutrition, breathing and character while studying at the Stuttgart Academy of Art (1913–16), Johannes Itten used these findings for the first time as a “teaching and educational system” while directing his Viennese painting school (1916–19). By 1918/19 at the latest (still before his move to the Bauhaus), Itten had also learned about Mazdaznan’s racial model. But how did the racialist worldview of the Swiss Bauhaus “master” affect Bauhaus practice? → more

Mazdaznan had a significant although often misunderstood impact on the life and work of Johannes Itten, a key figure in the development of the Weimar Bauhaus. A devout practitioner of Mazdaznan, he was responsible for introducing it to students of the Bauhaus in the early 1920s. This essay explores the intimate relationship between Itten, Mazdaznan and the Bauhaus and, in so doing, also underscores how in its infancy the Bauhaus was very different from its later incarnation as a school associated primarily with technical innovation. → more

In the late nineteenth century the self-styled Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha'nish founded Mazdaznan, a quasi-religious movement of vegetarian diet and body consciousness, which flourished across the USA and Europe until the 1940's. The Egyptian Postures is a guide to the most advanced Mazdaznan exercises that Johannes Itten taught his students at the Bauhaus. This edition of Dr. Otoman Zar-Adusht Ha’nish’s original instructions has been newly edited and illustrated by Ian Whittlesea with images of actor Ery Nzaramba demonstrating the postures. → more

“My method of bringing new life to archival images is to look at what happens at the margins rather than the center of a picture. I am also obsessed with making links, based on the belief that everything is connected. And also with what I call ‘narrative environments,’ mediating spaces facilitating new forms of engagement.” Luca Frei is a commissioned artist for bauhaus imaginista: Corresponding With. He talks about his approach to his installation for the exhibition at MoMAK in Kyoto. → more

My artistic practice working primarily with abstract folded paper objects led me to Josef Albers and his similar obsession with paper as an instructional medium. Initially looking for pleated paper forms and to learn more about the history of these techniques, I have since been swept up in the maelstrom of Albers' pedagogical mindset. It's difficult to look at one area of his thinking and not get pulled into many other directions, finding yourself challenged at every turn. → more

Lena Bergner developed carpet patterns applying specific methods learned from Paul Klee discernible in her finished work. The results, however, are quite unique. This is precisely what Klee sought to achieve with his classes at the Bauhaus: to point to paths of design so that the formal language is not arbitrary, without, however, prescribing predetermined outcomes. → more

It was the special qualities of the Swiss artist Johannes Itten, whose career as a primary and secondary school teacher was characterized by adherence to the principles of reform pedagogy, to have introduced a stabilizing structural element into the still unstable early years of the Bauhaus: the preliminary course which—in addition to the dual concept of teaching artistic and manual skills and thinking—was to remain a core part of Bauhaus pedagogy, despite considerable historical changes and some critical objections, until the closure of the school in 1933. → more

The emphasis on material experimentation was reflected in the Vorkurs or “preliminary course,” where the fundamental principles of the Bauhaus were introduced: a corresponding emphasis on craft took root in the Bauhaus’s newly-established workshops. → more